(this blog was orignally posted Sept 2005)
Each year, teachers all over the world wake up to the start of a new year with trepidation and a sense of rejuvenation. What will the kids be like? Will I be able to keep them engaged? Can I be more fun than those beautiful days that seem to appear outside my classroom?
After over twenty years of teaching, I still get anxious. To make matters worse, my administration often offers me a new and exciting opportunity—a course change. Hence, lesson preps over the summer aren’t seriously pursued. Personally, I’ve come to wonder if there isn’t some strange sign above my forehead announcing
my undying love for something new or as my former department head used to stressphilosophically, during those golden years in the 1980s, a proverbial “challenge”.
Like my students,I enter the school with a sense of hope and a strange fear that I’ve forgotten something important. Panic creeps into my mind and I begin to remember what I have to do as some sleep-deprived evenings begin again in earnest. Of course,
teaching is like riding a bike; we don’t really forget how to do it. The muscles needed, however, do seem to be a bit sore right now, as I finish off my second week back in the classroom.
Much to my surprise, the timetable assigned is the same one that I saw in the spring. Currently, I am teaching two grade twelve English courses, one at the college level and one at the workplace level, plus a grade twelve college level history course that deals with modern western civilization. The latter two courses are brand new, so maybe my forehead was flashing back in the spring. Nonetheless, this year I am definitely up for the “challenge”. I hope to be able to refine a few of the things done last semester with my grade twelve college units. Since last January, I’ve tried to start reinventing a tired and somewhat battered course. The kids have not really wanted to read books rejected from the academic/university stream. Stories like A Separate Peace by John Knowles are pretty nifty, but the question that always lurked in the back of my mind was whether or not the kids were really reading these novels. Perhaps I was afraid of the answer, but in January after attending a major conference in Toronto, I felt it was time to initiate some radical surgery. The units now in place include:
· A Values Unit which starts out with newspapers, magazines, and works its way up to short, dynamic novels by Orca Publishing.
· A Manga, Comics and Graphic Novels Unit which explores reading in a new format that bends earlier views of “literature”
· Detective, Murder, Mystery Unit which explores the genre and then deviates into a new novel called The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
· A Walk Into the Dark which will be a multi-media study on issues of morality and the world of the Holocaust, and include Elie Wiesel’s Night.
The first unit will culminate with a series of Orca Publishing novels that are subject appropriate, yet, written at the grade three to four reading levels. The topics deal with choices revolving around teenagers’ lives. The themes are gritty and very mature, which makes them extremely appealing to read. I am going
to try and repeat what succeeded last year. The goal is for students to gain a confidence in reading. They are going to be encouraged to read a novel, a task that many of them have successfully “faked” for most of their high school careers.
What happened last semester was the exact same thing that Cindy has found with her grade nine and ten students. THE KIDS READ. THEY ENJOY THE STORIES. Despite all the pedagogical research, sometimes a simple strategy is to find something that is inspiring and properly packaged. The covers don’t dumb-down the books,
and by default, the readers. Over the next two weeks, some of the assignments done will be posted on the web site for you to ponder. I am also going to try and modify this unit, so it can have some solid results with the grade twelve workplace
students.
At the moment we are finishing off some writing to build up class morale and ease the students into the tasks of reading, writing and sharing their ideas. The first lessons have dealt with values: the values we have as individuals, and the values that we have in our community, plus the world around us. The students have been encouraged to ask questions about values and interviewed me during the first week as a class. The results were mature, and extremely positive. Following up on this practice, the students then had to come up with five good probing questions about determining a person’s sense of values, plus a scenario that could be posed in an interview to determine what sorts of decision a person would
make if confronted by such an event. The college students have just finished interviewing two people in their class, while the workplace students have concentrated on one person in their class, plus the benefit of listening to how their person would respond to some additional questions from other students. Students were able
to build from each other’s work, without the added strain of having to research more than one person.
Next, we will be briefly looking at how values are presented through magazines and newspapers, with a specific emphasis on Reader’s Digest and its intended audience. And then, the novel will flow naturally out from our ideas on values and the reading opportunities offered.
The grade twelve history course has also been a bit of a challenge. So far, we have been looking at medieval society. Our current endeavour is something that I’ve coined as the Medieval Learning Fair. The students have been working in groups, preparing various themes and topics on medieval life. The problem that often crops
up in this kind of research is fine-tuning the research so that the reading is on topic and easily understood. In order to get around this issue, each group has been given a starting point with a series of topics to explore. These topics are all found on a specific web site. Instead of having to search the net for material, the common site has “kick started” them. Roger, our teacher-librarian, has linked it to the school’s home page, so access is now available both at school and from home. So far, the students have bought into the assignment and are using the information as a jumping off point. Incidentally, they are READING. The material is perfect, and the electronic format seems to be a good one, especially when you see our textbook, an antique that’s been around since the 1970s.
When the students have gathered their information, they will be putting it up on mural paper and then displaying each group’s information around the classroom.
Once this is done, I will try to create a worksheet of questions and get the students to move around the “Fair”, searching for the answers on the walls. Instead of presentations at the front of the room, the students will be learning the information on their own, reading each other’s work. After two days in the library, we’re now just starting to transform the information. I now need to find some medieval music and perhaps some food to make the fair complete,
and perhaps “authentic”. Each member of the group will also be required to become an expert on one of their topics and write a report, so no one can ride on the coattails of their group.
So that’s everything to date. The year is looking great and if the English budget comes through, there might be some further new materials. For instance, one book that could be used in the grade ten English locally developed course is Tom Finder by Martine Leavitt. Another possibility for the grade eleven college
course is Whirligig by Paul Fleischman . Both books were exciting reads this summer and contain the very sort of message that can make a book come alive in the mind of a reluctant reader.
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